The Week in Washington: a Lingering Stench

“The bad ones, they’re all gone . . . But there is a lingering stench and we’re going to get rid of that, too.” Trump declared in Missouri on Friday night, referring to members of his own justice department. Well, actually, Mr. President, there is quite a putrid stink emanating from various quarters in Washington, D.C., this week. Could it have been only seven days ago that Dr. Christine Blasey Ford claimed that she was sexually assaulted in the early 1980s by a grossly intoxicated 17-year-old she identified as Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh? Ford wants to tell the story of this horrendous high school incident to the Senate Judiciary Committee, and after intense negotiations, she is tentatively scheduled to testify on Thursday. She has asked that the FBI investigate the matter, and that another witness, Mark Judge, author of his 1997 memoir, Wasted: Tales of a Gen X Drunk, and allegedly in the room when the molestation took place, be called as well. Republicans have thus far denied both requests.

It seems the very same guys who interrogated Anita Hill in 1991—Senators Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Orrin Hatch of Utah—may be the ones to question Ford, though the Republicans are threatening to bring in an outside attorney—a woman!—to improve the dismal optics of old white dudes once again grilling an alleged victim of abuse. No matter how compelling Jones’s story, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell brazenly stated Wednesday that the fix is in. “You’re all following the current Supreme Court fight, and you will watch it unfold in the course of the next week,” he told the Family Research Council Values Voter Summit. “President Trump has nominated a stunningly successful individual. You’ve watched the fight, you’ve watched the tactics, but here’s what I want to tell you: In the very near future, Judge Kavanaugh will be on the United States Supreme Court . . .”

Betraying a fathomless lack of knowledge on the subject of sexual assault, the commander in chief himself chimed in, tweeting something so strange that perhaps it was meant to be sarcastic, but maybe not? “I have no doubt that, if the attack on Dr. Ford was as bad as she says, charges would have been immediately filed with local Law Enforcement Authorities by either her or her loving parents. I ask that she bring those filings forward so that we can learn date, time, and place!” This was a bridge too far for Maine Sen. Susan Collins, who called Trump’s remarks “appalling.” Collins’s vote to confirm Kavanaugh is all-important. If she manages to muster the courage to reject this appalling character, and if Sen. Lisa Murkowski and/or Sen. Jeff Flake join her (c’mon Flakey—do the right thing! you’re not even running for re-election!), the candidate will go down as swiftly as a fly drowning in a keg of stale beer.

Though the prospective Ford/Kavanaugh showdown dominated the headlines, there was other news. On Wednesday, the president handed out hot dogs, in lieu of hurling paper towels, to hurricane victims in the Carolinas; on Thursday, it was revealed that Trump’s erstwhile attorney/fixer Michael Cohen has met repeatedly with Robert Mueller’s committee and is blabbing about Russia, in hopes that his loud canary-singing will result in reduced jail time. And, bombshell! On Friday evening, the front page of The New York Times offered this stunner: “The deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, suggested last year that he secretly record President Trump in the White House to expose the chaos consuming the administration, and he discussed recruiting cabinet members to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Mr. Trump from office for being unfit.”

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Some people think that this Times story was planted by Rosenstein’s enemies, to get Trump to axe him. But then again—get this!—other people, and Sean Hannity is among them, are urging Trump not to dump the deputy AG—because it could hurt Republicans in the midterms, or maybe because it is easier to discredit the Mueller probe if a maligned, discredited Rosenstein stays put. For his part, Rosenstein insists he was just kidding when he said all that funny stuff—and really, who doesn’t find it hilarious that so many government officials think the president is nuts?

If this is all too complicated for the casual observer to follow, here it is in a nutshell: This is the third time in two weeks that White House leakers have disclosed ongoing discussions questioning President Trump’s sanity.